Anarchism and pre-civilized man

[jpahmad]

I think, for the sake of the argument, we should consider mankind, before 10,000 BC, as effectively existing in a state of anarchy.  If we can demonstrate this, than we can point to 95% of mankind's existence as living in anarchy.  This would destroy the myth that there has always been a state.  And we could easily have something historically tangible to reference when making a case for anarchism.

 

My case:

 

1. There was no monopoly on force in hunter-gatherer communities.
2. There of course was coercion, but it was kept in check by the fact that everyone depended on the cooperation of everyone else to survive and the tribal leader could be discarded if he/she went nuts.
3. There is no historical evidence that points to a community system where one person had complete control.
4. No slavery (impossible to maintain)
5. Staying with the group was voluntary and people could actually leave and form their own tribe if they wanted. (This usually happened when the tribe got pretty big)
6. There was war, lot's of it.  But...we're just analyzing the dynamics within the group. 
7. War was probably caused and maintained by mystical beliefs.  If those members of the tribe really thought they had something in common with other tribes, they probably wouldn't want to put a spear in their skull. (They probably viewed other tribes as we view other species today, so there would have been no lace for empathy)
8. Lack of empathy for people of other tribes was a result of a lack of knowledge for what those other people/animals were.  The probably looked different, dressed different, and talked different, and, were hostile to them due to mystical beliefs propagated by the local medicine man.

 

My conclusion is that anarchy is the natural state of man, and one that we have spent most of our ancestral history experiencing.  What do you think?

 

 

[Songbirdo]

 

Takes your anarchic civilization point to the next step: government was a tool created to domesticate human livestock much like man domesticated animals and plants in the centuries prior. 

[J. D. Stembal]

While this all may be true, it is largely difficult to establish as fact without empirical evidence. We can look at modern H-G tribes to get a feel for tribal hierarchies and social behaviors. I don't think there was any war in the modern sense because there was no agriculture or political infrastructure in existence. As we see from modern war, there is no overall economic benefit to war unless you invade and take over the tax livestock of another nation.

 

This is not to say that there was no aggression or conflicts arising between individuals or tribes, say when two tribes end up hunting the same buffalo for some strange reason, or you look at someone's mate the wrong way. This is not the same as the modern concept of war, which is entirely funded by magic money that doesn't exist. You've already recognized the important factor that there was no state. Understand that a state is not possible without moving to agriculture first. All of the earliest civilizations grew out of fertile land.

 

1. Egypt around the Nile River,

2. Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

3. The Yellow River in modern day China.

 

The second most important consideration stems from the first. There was no formal system of money. Trade was based largely on barter if it happened at all. Trading tools for weapons, for example. The nomadic nature of H-G societies dictate that personal property was kept at a minimum. The tribe follows the food. Economic effort, if you could call it that, was solely focused on raising children, teaching them the various jobs necessary for survival, and continuing the culture of the tribe.

 

The third most important consideration of tribal societies is that child birth and early development were very tenuous prospects. I forget where I read these numbers (it was either Sex at Dawn or The Chemistry Between Us), but women died during child birth around 20% of the time while up to 30% of children never survived to the age of 5. When the mother and child did survive, constant breast feeding allowed most mothers to delay having more children. Continuous lactation prevents ovulation and is the most basic form of birth control. However, if another child is conceived, and it cannot be fed or carried by another women, it gets left behind to be eaten by scavengers. Thus, infanticide was a necessary and common practice. As a side benefit, it is often cited that children in H-G societies enjoyed an adult to child ratio of 4:1, meaning that those children that did survive to childhood were well cared for and well educated by the tribe. Imagine if everyone everyone born today had four loving family members staying home with them. It's not only mathematically impossible, but philosophically impossible as dictated by our modern fascist government. There can be no debt if everyone invests their time and money into raising children. In fact, it is the modern surplus of children that the government sorely requires to continue printing money. Debt is created based on the future tax slavery of unborn children.

 

We need to argue that anarchy is the free state of man, and therefore, voluntary associations are the only legitimate form of governance. Appealing to anarcho-primitivism is shrouded in too much myth to be of any benefit to arguing for anarchy. Considering the three most important differences between modern society and primitive tribal society, you can clearly see that the modern state is impossible to have without agriculture, currency, and debt creation. Therefore, primitive tribal culture does not make a convincing argument against the state in and of itself. We should be operating from first principles and non-aggression when we argue for anarchy or voluntarism.

[dsayers]

My conclusion is that anarchy is the natural state of man, and one that we have spent most of our ancestral history experiencing.  What do you think?

 

I agree that present day, peaceful interaction is the default since the initiation of the use of force is antithetical to self-preservation.

 

The State is not a rational conclusion, but present due to momentum. I assume there was a point where it all began. I've wondered if at this point, humans lacked the capacity for reason and therefore had no reason to NOT aggress against others. Meaning that we've evolved without revising the way in which we solve problems. Which wouldn't be a surprise since aggression dramatically impairs innovation.

 

We are social creatures and we imitate the behaviors that are modeled for us in an attempt to coalesce with our environment for survival's sake. I think this is why it's crucial that we teach and model peaceful interactions so that the day will come where all of this will be a bad fairy tale.

[jpahmad]

 

Takes your anarchic civilization point to the next step: government was a tool created to domesticate human livestock much like man domesticated animals and plants in the centuries prior. 

 

 

Yes, this is just like Stef's video "The Story of Your Enslavement."  I watched the one above today and it triggered the thought in my mind that "pre-civilized" man was living in a state of anarchy

 

 

 

 

 

. I assume there was a point where it all began. I've wondered if at this point, humans lacked the capacity for reason and therefore had no reason to NOT aggress against others. Meaning that we've evolved without revising the way in which we solve problems.

 

I assumed we always had the capacity to reason since the estimated decent of homo sapien.  We certainly did have the capacity to choose.  Before agriculture/farming, we chose to be together and cooperate rather than apart.  It was completely voluntary.  Was it not?  Who was going to use resources and energy to hunt you down if you ran away from the tribe?

 

[JeanPaul]

Our ancestors were more civilized than us.

[prolix]

For more on this subject look into Daniel Quinn's excellent book Ishmael

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)

 

 

 

Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines the mythological thinking at the heart of modern civilization, its effect on ethics, and how this relates to sustainability and societal collapse on the global scale. The novel uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the pinnacle of biological evolution. It posits that anthropocentrism and several other widely accepted modern ideas are actually cultural myths and that global civilization is enacting these myths with catastrophic consequences. The novel was awarded the $500,000 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991, a year before its formal publication.
Ishmael ultimately comprises a loose trilogy, including a 1996 spiritual sequel, The Story of B, and a 1997 sidequel, My Ishmael. Quinn also details how he arrived at the ideas behind Ishmael in his autobiography, Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest. Yet another related follow-up book to Ishmael is Quinn's 1999 short treatise, Beyond Civilization.

[dsayers]

We certainly did have the capacity to choose.  Before agriculture/farming, we chose to be together and cooperate rather than apart.  It was completely voluntary.  Was it not?  Who was going to use resources and energy to hunt you down if you ran away from the tribe?

 

Who could possibly know? Also, I think we're approaching the idea differently. You're talking about voluntarily separating from the tribe and I was referring to one person subjugating another for domination's sake.

 

I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner. For whatever reason, it had escaped me why I had come to the conclusion that it's probable we once lacked the capacity for reason. Which I will share now that I've remembered.

 

Present day, we understand that aggression is the result of childhood trauma. That child is traumatized because their parents were traumatized. Their parents were traumatized because THEIR parents... It becomes an infinite regression. There had to be an origin. I doubt it was one dude got bonked on the head, tried to dominate another person, and everybody abandoned peaceful life to compete in domination. I think it's a simpler explanation (assuming Darwinism is valid enough) that we were once sub-capacity for reason and as we developed reason, we were already amid a cycle of violence that we've perpetuated to this day out of culture/habit.

 

What do you think about that? This isn't something I'm certain of, but these are my thoughts on it.

[jpahmad]

Who could possibly know? Also, I think we're approaching the idea differently. You're talking about voluntarily separating from the tribe and I was referring to one person subjugating another for domination's sake.

 

I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner. For whatever reason, it had escaped me why I had come to the conclusion that it's probable we once lacked the capacity for reason. Which I will share now that I've remembered.

 

Present day, we understand that aggression is the result of childhood trauma. That child is traumatized because their parents were traumatized. Their parents were traumatized because THEIR parents... It becomes an infinite regression. There had to be an origin. I doubt it was one dude got bonked on the head, tried to dominate another person, and everybody abandoned peaceful life to compete in domination. I think it's a simpler explanation (assuming Darwinism is valid enough) that we were once sub-capacity for reason and as we developed reason, we were already amid a cycle of violence that we've perpetuated to this day out of culture/habit.

 

What do you think about that? This isn't something I'm certain of, but these are my thoughts on it.

 

 

Yes that makes sense.  There certainly is a false assumption that we have been the same biological creature ever since we descended from our nearest ancestor 130,000 years ago.  Isn't it now starting to surface that evolution has sped up significantly since the agricultural revolution?  So, yeah, there had to be a time when we could use tools better than other species, but not exactly reason that well.

 

However, would you agree that pre-civilized man's society was anarchistic or voluntary?  (leaving treatment of children aside)

[Josh F]

Certainly agriculture saw the rise of the state as we know it, but under tribalism there was not philosophic anarchy.  They didn't have churches or bibles, but one wouldn't say they were free of irrational superstition.  The idea, as I see it, is that the family and tribal unit were the birth place of the state.  Small groups of people who exclusively maintained social order through violence and mysticism.  They don't have many of the modern tools required to maintain a modern state, but they did have hierarchies in the form of chiefs, shamans, etc.  The near entirety of ancient fossils were victims of murder, and mothers practiced infanticide rampantly.  The monopoly of the threat of violence was always present, even without tools like armies or police or the IRS to subject one another.  It was present in families and then in tribes.  

[Malovane]

I think, for the sake of the argument, we should consider mankind, before 10,000 BC, as effectively existing in a state of anarchy.  If we can demonstrate this, than we can point to 95% of mankind's existence as living in anarchy.  This would destroy the myth that there has always been a state.  And we could easily have something historically tangible to reference when making a case for anarchism.

 

My case:

 

1. There was no monopoly on force in hunter-gatherer communities.
2. There of course was coercion, but it was kept in check by the fact that everyone depended on the cooperation of everyone else to survive and the tribal leader could be discarded if he/she went nuts.
3. There is no historical evidence that points to a community system where one person had complete control.
4. No slavery (impossible to maintain)
5. Staying with the group was voluntary and people could actually leave and form their own tribe if they wanted. (This usually happened when the tribe got pretty big)
6. There was war, lot's of it.  But...we're just analyzing the dynamics within the group. 
7. War was probably caused and maintained by mystical beliefs.  If those members of the tribe really thought they had something in common with other tribes, they probably wouldn't want to put a spear in their skull. (They probably viewed other tribes as we view other species today, so there would have been no lace for empathy)
8. Lack of empathy for people of other tribes was a result of a lack of knowledge for what those other people/animals were.  The probably looked different, dressed different, and talked different, and, were hostile to them due to mystical beliefs propagated by the local medicine man.

 

My conclusion is that anarchy is the natural state of man, and one that we have spent most of our ancestral history experiencing.  What do you think?

 

Well, it's hard to ascertain anything with certainty about the life of humans before recorded history, but we can take a look at various tribes that exist today to see how they may have operated.

 

On your points:

 

1. Probably not true for all, or even most tribes, since the males typically had a monopoly on force over females - and even the weaker men. In some current African tribes, you'll find that they pretty much gang rape the women, and this is considered pretty normal.

 

2. Physical and emotional coercion developed as a survival tool. Being in a tribe was probably more along the lines of being in a screwed up family in severe poverty.

 

3. True for all of history, really - though we're getting closer to the possibility of absolute control.

 

4. Many tribes enslaved members of other tribes. Many still do.

 

5. Yes. Research shows they often split when the local area can no longer support the numbers they have. A couple incidents I've read about indicate that they might leave in pretty bad blood fairly often, as they had been fighting over the scarce resources.

 

6. Yep - lots of war. Quite territorial. Again, this can apply to internal politics as well. Some tribes are peaceful (like the South African bushmen), but plenty of others don't really abide by the non-aggression principle. Even without a chief, they still form internal alliances.

 

7. Sometimes, probably. Most current inter-tribal wars deal with gathering fresh women and food (the latter of which might include people).

 

8. Hard to say. For many South American tribes, pretty much all of them accept that being raided by other tribes (and raiding other tribes) is just a fact of life. It's their mechanism for maintaining the health of their tribe.

 

Tribal life could be considered anarchic. But it would probably best be defined as a more socialist-anarchist environment.

[Josh F]

Most tribes were matriarchal, as the women have more power over men in a state of nature because they're the mothers of the men.  Infanticide is rampant, which is likely why the tribal gods of war are often female.  Patriarchy is said to have come after agrarianism, as protection and raiding became survival tools best accomplished by men.  Most tribal and nomadic cultures have women playing a much larger roll in warfare.  The steppe tribes, for example, gave rise to the mythological Amazonian because of their female warriors.  Similarly ancient Germanic tribes were sometimes wiped out by their own women after their men would lose a battle.  The women would kill their men, children and then themselves.  Some tribes were even ruled by women, and women comprised important roles within the priest class as well.  Cherokee leaders required the approval of a female council and had female chiefs (check out Wilma Mankiller), so did Spartans who were governed mostly by women especially in the absence of men.  Helen of Troy was also Helen of Sparta, and in the Sparta version of the story she loved the bloodshed.  The patriarchal athenians were more peaceful, democratic and enterprising.  

[luxfelix]

Who could possibly know? Also, I think we're approaching the idea differently. You're talking about voluntarily separating from the tribe and I was referring to one person subjugating another for domination's sake.

 

I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner. For whatever reason, it had escaped me why I had come to the conclusion that it's probable we once lacked the capacity for reason. Which I will share now that I've remembered.

 

Present day, we understand that aggression is the result of childhood trauma. That child is traumatized because their parents were traumatized. Their parents were traumatized because THEIR parents... It becomes an infinite regression. There had to be an origin. I doubt it was one dude got bonked on the head, tried to dominate another person, and everybody abandoned peaceful life to compete in domination. I think it's a simpler explanation (assuming Darwinism is valid enough) that we were once sub-capacity for reason and as we developed reason, we were already amid a cycle of violence that we've perpetuated to this day out of culture/habit.

 

What do you think about that? This isn't something I'm certain of, but these are my thoughts on it.

 

For what it's worth, this feels like a reasonable hypothesis.

 

Though it may not be directly testable, maybe there are some historical/anthropological/archaeological examples to support this?

 

(Josh F presents some possible evidence, as does EndTheUsurpation with references to agricultural origins to civilization in response to Songbirdo.)

 

I do find hope in the ability for people to overcome violence to create, and discover, despite previous trauma; however, I would not go so far as to suggest that violence gives people something to overcome (that good needs evil etc.).

[dsayers]

Though it may not be directly testable, maybe there are some historical/anthropological/archaeological examples to support this?

 

Would such evidence be possible or necessary?

 

By possible I mean that the capacity for reason comes from the brain, which completely degrades. I suppose cranial space would be an indication, but don't we already have such evidence?

 

By necessary, I mean in terms of a logical exercise. If I described to you a square circle, you wouldn't need to challenge me to produce it in order to know I was lying. We know that today, we have the capacity to interact without violence. We know that violence continues anyways, in a cyclical fashion. Does it not follow that it had to begin SOMEWHERE?

 

The only hole I see in my consideration is that a time when "humans" lacked the capacity for reason doesn't necessarily mean we dominated one another. I often argue that the initiation of the use of force is antithetical to self-preservation. As such, I accept that it is possible that such a consideration could be instinctive and not the product of an upper brain.

 

I am fascinated by the possibilities. Allison Gopnik's discovery that present day, we are naturally empathetic is extremely important. It would be nice to understand how long this has been true. Especially since many supporters of the State assume human nature is savage (even though that argues against the State not for it).

[luxfelix]

Would such evidence be possible or necessary?

 

By possible I mean that the capacity for reason comes from the brain, which completely degrades. I suppose cranial space would be an indication, but don't we already have such evidence?

 

By necessary, I mean in terms of a logical exercise. If I described to you a square circle, you wouldn't need to challenge me to produce it in order to know I was lying. We know that today, we have the capacity to interact without violence. We know that violence continues anyways, in a cyclical fashion. Does it not follow that it had to begin SOMEWHERE?

 

The only hole I see in my consideration is that a time when "humans" lacked the capacity for reason doesn't necessarily mean we dominated one another. I often argue that the initiation of the use of force is antithetical to self-preservation. As such, I accept that it is possible that such a consideration could be instinctive and not the product of an upper brain.

 

I am fascinated by the possibilities. Allison Glopnik's discovery that present day, we are naturally empathetic is extremely important. It would be nice to understand how long this has been true. Especially since many supporters of the State assume human nature is savage (even though that argues against the State not for it).

 

I don't know. 

 

If we had evidence of when we started to dominate one another, then I imagine it would support what we already know about violence, but... what if it also turns out to be a kind of Rosetta Stone for uncovering other aspects of our origins? Maybe we could find out where there was a split between the rational and non-violent behaviors and this violent cycle we see today (if it's not a carry-over from pre-upper brain instinct)?

 

(In other words, my non-argument is a hypothetical appeal to curiosity and a call to adventure!  )

 

I see your point though, it's not necessary for the logical exercise.

 

I am also fascinated about how long we've been empathetic (and/or had the capacity); and if empathy/mirror neurons developed because of pre-upper brain violent instincts, then... (more credit to empathy as a better tool for survival?)

[Josh F]

Also, to contribute to this theory, humans lived through things like the Ice Age with extreme resource scarcity.  The Ice Age makes those post-nuclear holocaust roving band of mad max style warriors look like progress..